I had never carved a Jack O' Lantern before, so I thought that this year - with all the crazy elaborate stuff people are doing, I thought I'd give it a go. So I just got finished a little while ago, and it looks okay. Just trying to get a picture now.

Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban announced today they will team up to host the 2010 NBA All-Star game at Jerry World in Dallas.

The Cowboys are a nine point underdog to the Giants this weekend in NYC. I'll take the 9 points and your money, thank you very much.

WoTLK is set to debut at midnight on the 13th of November. With 11 million online subscribers World of Warcraft is the most popular online game in the world. The rumor of an epic mace named "Obama's Hammer of Righteous Fury" is, indeed, just a rumor.

The thing that depresses me about Obama's ads is they so confidently rely upon the listener being fully uninformed. He's certain his audience knows absolutely nothing about how the present financial situation came about, and that the whole matter can laid in full at Bush's feet, and that his opponent is a Bush clone. Anybody with a trace of information knows both of those things are false, yet that is the message his campaign persistently, confidently hammers. It's insulting. To shift responsibility, to speak as if Congress doesn't even exist and has played no role whatever, to fully ignore legislation enacted by liberal congress and depict the present administration as a regulation dismantling entity when the exact opposite is true, to ignore earmarks, the essential bribes Bush paid to congress to avoid vetoing bills larded up in order to proceed with a war they persistently describe as illegal, and then further to make energy companies out to be undeserving villains, is a straight-up affront to the intelligence of voters paying attention.

That these positions are repeated in conversation so frequently causes me to socialize as seldom as possible and to purposefully shrink my social circle because I know I'll encounter these positions and become depressed all over again. Not because these positions are true, but because they've become a perverse version of truth for so many. It depresses me that its easier to just accept these incomplete and hateful versions of truth than it is to make the effort for a more comprehensive understanding. I'm better off not arguing with people.

* abruptly shifts thought flow *

Did you know you can add miso to nearly everything? Create sauces and dressings with it? It's very good for you. I bought a four pound bucket thinking that would last for months and I'm nearly half way through. Today I added a large tablespoon full to a batch of black beans and it was absolutely delicious. I think I'll buy another four pound bucket from a different place. It's not as good as the first place, but it's a lot less expensive because they use modern equipment, large steel vats in huge quantities instead of old-world wooden vats in smaller batches. The first place, the expensive one, is South River Miso, and the second place is Great Eastern Sun Master Organic Miso. The chief difference to the consumer is that South River's miso has little bits of whatever grain it's made suspended in it, the other one doesn't. It's like chunky peanut butter compared to smooth peanut butter. Their websites are very interesting. They're both proud of their products and their companies histories.

* shifts again *

Today I cut down the tomato plants in one of the Earth boxes on the balcony. This made me sad and relieved at the same time. Frankly, I'm tired of watering them. They were very demanding. Now they're not. Here's a picture of my crop.

The pepper plants have aphids on them. They're hiding underneath the leaves. Bastards. I sprayed them with soapy water. Tomorrow I'll check to see if they're dead. If not, then plan B.

Chip, I've seen some ingenious ways of watering tomato plants with soaker hose. You cut a length and get a three way pipe connector, to which you connect a water feed and then loop the soaker hose, placing it around the plant. I was thinking about using it next year with the corn.

Erica Jong, a woman author I have read, said something today that now has me worried: What about all the rioting in the streets by enraged elderly moderate Republicans if McCain doesn't win this thing next Tuesday?

TitusAskMeIwontsayno said... Also, there is nothing wrong with the economy.

Well, a recession is two consecutive quarters in which the economy contracts. After, what, five quarters of economic growth where the media insisted we were in a recession, the last quarter finally posted a marginal loss. If the next quarter posts a loss, that technically is a recession, and ironically enough, if it happens, and if Obama is President, the press will insist that we aren't in a recession!

I'm afraid my fears of a McCain loss might be developing into an obsession. A paralyzing terror. An anxious fever that keeps you awake at night. I'm extremely worried that McCain will be sabotaged by Democrat dirty tricks, and that if a McCain loss indeed comes to pass, the result will be a second American Civil War led by white-haired AARP members. Believe me: the streets would run red with blood.

Unable to sleep last night, I cried all night and I can't cure my ailing back for all the stress that has reduces me to a bundle of nerves. My back is suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium.

I find myself wondering, from time to time, what percentage of the people positing here that neighborhoods will burn in the wake of this election live in neighborhoods they believe will be among the burning.

The Giants will be smoked like a cheap cigar, quickly and without pleasure. They are full of themselves and ready to fold. But Plaxico will catch 18 passes for 42 yards and still complain he didn't get enough chances.

Reader, driving around town, I note that the Obama signs are outside houses of the poor and the rich. The middle class neighborhods are for McCain to the extent they're telling who they're for. Kind of makes a mockery of the whole "McCain doesn't care about the middle class" theory.

When I lived in Louisiana, they had this thing there called the Super Dome. Is the Super Bowl like that? A great big arena but without a lid? They also had this thing called the Sugar Bowl which sounded sweet. They do grow a lot of sugar cane down there on one-time plantations. In fact, they've made great contributions to advancement of sugar refinement which I learned about in Louisiana History class, but for the life of me I can't remember what they were.

What a great country America is! Just a few years after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, the America people are open to electing someone as President whose middle name is HUSSEIN!!

And he will win in a landslide!

I'm very proud of America.

My fave singer, Morrissey, had a song a few years back where he sang: "In America/The land of the free, they said/And of opportunity/In a just and a truthful way/But where the president is never black, female or gay/and until that day/you've got nothing to say to me/to help me believe...."

But we're about to elect the first black President. Just days away now! And his middle name is Hussein, no less.

Morrissey: Do you believe now???

I'm very excited for America at the moment. I hope Obama proves to be a great president. He has a very tough road ahead of him, in part because of the mess that's being passed on to him. But I'm hoping that the right person has come along at the right time, as has been so often the case in American history.

Ashley Olsen was just on Letterman and she was really dull. Althouse was hyping this person the other day. The Olsen twins don't deserve all that much admiration. They won the lottery at such a young age, I'm not surprised Ashley is such a dullard.

Black beans aren't all that attractive. They amount to black sludge with lumps. I suppose they can be made more attractive with diced onion, cheese, chives, whatever. Here's the black beans I made dolled up with balcony tomatoes and Aerogarden basil.

I don't know if we have the best weed in Cleveland. I only smoke it once in a blue moon, and when I do it's always hyrdo.

But I prefer alcohol. Scotch, specifically. Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks.

I know it's kinda gay to get carried away with a politician, and I'm trying not to. But I have to admit that Obama seems to be the right man at the right time. It almost makes me wanna question my atheism. It makes me very proud of America that he's about to be elected, even though he's way to the left of me. But my view of Obama is that he'll turn out to be a centrist like Clinton, but without Clinton's personal scandals.

And and props to Charlie Manuel for winning the World Series! Charlie was my team's manager a few years back. The Cleveland Indians. They fired him for B.S. reasons. Now he is vindicated. You know, Charlie Manuel has had to deal with a lot of bigotry in his career because of his hillbilly accent. I'm glad he has proven all those bigots wrong.

I share the urge to avoid political conversations that promise to be either verbally tense or just internally excruciating. I have a friend in her 70's who tried to explain away my contempt for Rev. Wright by talking about the important role of the black church, which she personally understood while I (implicitly) did not.

Fortunately she's used to my disagreement, so I suggested that even if I was prepared to give him a pass for all of the sermons, I'd still think he was a vain jerk for stabbing Obama in the back with his harmful (did I say demented?) interviews. This bit she could see, but he wasn't racist or hateful. In her mind a white person is not permitted to decide that a black preacher is a prick with bad ideas, because I am "unqualified". I really care about this woman, but I wanted to bash my head against something rather than explain how racist (and just wrong) I find that point of view.

loafingoaf - on the off chance that your guy doesn't win, please try to remind yourself that America is the same country today as it will be on Nov. 5 - We've been about evenly split politically since we were attacked.

I'm sure Morrissey was besotted with Thatcher, and so comforted to see a woman in power. wait..

We had a frost a week ago that killed all my tomato vines. I ate the last of my home-grown tomatoes tonight. A couple of days ago, I sliced a tomato that didn't taste great, so I diced it and tossed it into some sauteed onions and garlic. I added some mashed up roast squash, mixed it up, and served it on pasta. Very tasty.

[Obama] has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief.

The need for rebuke is a woman's issue.

Along with the belief in the essential innocence of a Chicago pol, provided he has nice eyes.

If we follow the script for the last depression, we can expect the Dow to hit 4-5000 before it begins its climb back up. We first hit 4000 back in 1995. (1972 first close above 1,000, 1987 first close above 2,000)

After the crash in 1929, stocks rallied at first -just like we see now- but then fell and fell and did not reach pre-crash levels again until the 1950s - more than 20 years later.

That is, it might take us equally long to recover as well.

And we are on the cusp of electing another FDR intent on using socialist principles to spur recovery, only to make the Depression last 7 years longer than it should have. Indeed, FDR's policies made it a "Great" Depression.

I've seen a few financial types recently for their annual physicals. Man, to a one they are scared shitless, just like our own Dust Bunny Queen. Our liberal ideals of cradle to grave subsidies, like Medicare and Social Security, as well as our massive pension promises to state employees and teachers, are woefully underfunded and not able to be funded. They are simply unsustainable.

And unsustainable things tend to cease, or as the surgeons say, all bleeding tends to stop.

Well, it looks like my plan to go John Galt won't be a merely punitive response for electing a socialist, it'll be borne of necessity by being wiped out.

"The Israelis are out to "crush the P.L.O.," said Rashid Khalidi, a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa. He said they hope that by doing so, they will undermine the international recognition the P.L.O. has gained and eliminate its demands for an independent Palestinian state as a rallying point for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

Afghanistan war is lost, unless new president has new policy in place to start immediately on Jan. 20. Situation grim, as Taliban now rule large sections of country and our European allies are losing their will. Both candidates' representatives being briefed in D.C. The Saudis have been hosting peace talks with the Taliban and Afghan government for a month.

Both candidates say they will escalate, the only question is by how much. The tribal/community development model of Iraq will not work in Afghanistan, says US commander.

This leaves us where?

Massive escalation or declare victory and leave?

The Soviets had more than 300,000 troops in Afghanistan at the peak of their 10-year war there. The allies have a total of about 70,000 after seven years.

Is that international crisis Biden talked about Afghanistan? And is the US's unpopular response the draft?